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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939830">Walking Forward (Through the Past)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma'>SecretEnigma</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Deleantur-Verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy XV</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidental Marriage, Accidental Relationship, Action/Adventure, And By Eventual, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Noctis Lucis Caelum, Background Relationships, Coeurls, Don't copy to another site, Eventual Romance, F/M, Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), Galahdian Culture (Final Fantasy XV), Help, I Mean When Deleantur Figures Out Women Other Than Luna Exist, I Tried To Make This a One-Shot, I failed, In a Romance Sense, Matchmaker Astrals, Mentioned Nyx Ulric, OP Noctis Lucis Caelum, Ostium Clan, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Noctis Lucis Caelum, Ramuh Ships Them, So Many Clans, So many OCs, So much worldbuilding, Tags Contain Spoilers, Time Travel Fix-It, Ulric Clan, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:54:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>19,182</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939830</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretEnigma/pseuds/SecretEnigma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been six years since the Wave destroyed the Starscourge and Ardyn, Somnus, and Aera found a blue-eyed stranger in the wilderness. The future is bright for the House of Lucis Caelum and the House of Nox Fleuret, and the brothers are happy.</p><p>But for Deleantur, it is still hard to settle down when all of his future exists in what was once his past, and the new developments among the kingdoms that might one day be only known as Lucis, are to him the old news of dusty history books and unwanted memories.</p><p>So when a Messenger of the Astrals leads him to the wild, untamed shores of Galahd, Deleantur follows in hopes of something new to entertain himself with for a few months before going back to Somnus and Ardyn.</p><p>He should have known better than to trust that the Astrals didn't have bigger plans in store for him there than that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aera Mirus Fleuret/Ardyn Izunia, Ardyn Izunia &amp; Noctis Lucis Caelum, Noctis Lucis Caelum &amp; Somnus Lucis Caelum, Noctis Lucis Caelum/Original Female Character(s), Noctis Lucis Caelum/Original Ulric Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Deleantur-Verse [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517114</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>403</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>THIS WAS MEANT TO BE A ONE-SHOT.</p><p>As you can see, it is no longer a one-shot.</p><p>Mostly because I'm 22k words in and I have no idea how much farther I have to go to get to the ending (at least I know what the ending is, but how long it'll take to get there... *uneasy noises*. For comparison, the OG Deleantur one-shot is roughly 26k. -.-</p><p>So. I'm making it a multi-chap and probably dooming myself to making this thing even longer because once I multi-chap the muses go nuts. But hopefully I can keep this under ... idk ten chapters? Fifteen? We'll see.</p><p>Also if you haven't read Deleantur, the first one-shot in this verse, then please go read it or literally nothing will make sense. XD</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If Deleantur had asked anyone about Galahd, they would have told him that it was a dangerous place. Somnus would have told him about all the times other kings or nobles or warlords had attempted to claim the jungle islands for their own only for their armies to be hounded out and torn apart by the natives —or the daemons, but those were no longer a concern at least—. Ardyn would have spoken longingly over the incredibly rare healing plants that could be found there, but that were so dangerous to retrieve —because of the wildlife, tricky terrain, and natives— he had only seen them once or twice in person.</p><p>Gilgamesh … would have probably smacked Deleantur over the head because he would have known why Deleantur was asking. <b>After</b> smacking him, Gilgamesh would have sat him down and told him all the horror stories and legends the mainland folk had of the Galahd islanders. Stories of sailors who saw flickers of purple fire on the tops of the cliffs and heard eerie, echoing, inhuman songs coming from the jungle in the dead of night despite the daemons. Stories of surviving soldiers who had lost their comrades —and often limbs of their own— to ghost-like attackers and their snarling Coeurl companions. Legends of the common folk and middle classes that had never <b>seen</b> the islands for themselves but had heard from the cousin of a friend’s first wife’s nephew that the inhabitants of Galahd weren’t human at all really, but rather creatures born of the unfortunates who had shipwrecked on the shores and then mated with the rare black-pelted Coeurls there to create half-blood spawn.</p><p>Which was exactly why Deleantur was not asking. He had already read the stories recorded in the royal library —much smaller than the one in his memory, but still impressive— and could recall the memories of other royals who <b>had</b> asked about Galahd and been regaled with those horror stories. He didn’t need to hear them all again, especially since it wouldn’t dissuade them from his chosen course —he had delved daemon-filled ice caves and Solheim ruins where the laws of reality curled in on themselves like a tangled ribbons, a few cranky natives weren’t going to deter him—. He had set his mind to exploring Galahd and nothing was going to stop him. Not even his brothers of this era —Ignis could have talked him out of it, but Ignis didn’t exist yet and that thought still made his chest hurt—.</p><p>Besides. Ardyn and Somnus weren’t here. Ardyn was with Aera, carefully building a new, proper capital for the Oracle line and doting on his three children —Psyche, his eldest at five years, and the three year old twins Flora and Latona—. Somnus was in the newly named Insomnia, happily tearing down most of his father’s old unjust laws now that he was officially king and wooing that spitfire noblewoman who could —and had, once provoked— flip Gilgamesh onto his back in a spar. In the six years that had passed since Noctis became Deleantur —since traveling to the past and somehow becoming brother to his ancestor and the never-Accursed, since leaving everything behind to give his lost family a chance at a better future—, things had become bright for the Lucis Caelum family.</p><p>Somnus had stepped into the shoes of being first heir apparent and then king with a talent and kindness that had startled them all —especially Somnus, who had frequently come to Deleantur for advice and to vent his fears that he would become a tyrant king—. Gilgamesh had finally gotten married to the woman he had apparently been pining after for years —the tiniest, gentlest person Deleantur had ever met— but been too afraid to “spread his tainted line” until Deleantur smacked him over the head a few times and reminded him that Noctis’s very respected Shield had been <b>Gladiolus Amicitia</b> so get over it and give the woman flowers already. Ardyn and Aera —who had married not long after Deleantur asked Bahamut, Shiva, and Ramuh to come bless their engagement— had not only had adorable children, but were also founding the Nox Fleuret kingdom much closer to the current Lucis’s borders.</p><p>Taelpar Crag, specifically, where the Tempering Ground had been built in Deleantur’s past. Ardyn and Aera both said it was because the crystals growing within the canyon were very potent, ambient magical enhancers and that its relatively short distance to Insomnia made it very advantageous, but Deleantur suspected it was really just a massive, unspoken nose-thumbing at the future where Tenebrae had been as far from Insomnia as possible while still maintaining contact and Gilgamesh had been cursed to wander the Crag with just his ghosts. Either way, the initial wings of the hidden palace had been carved out and made livable enough by this point that the entirety of the Nox Fleuret clan were living there, including Ardyn’s and Aera’s daughters —who were brilliant lights in Deleantur’s life, there had been many tears shed the day Ardyn was able to hold his firstborn in his arms while Deleantur watched from the corner—.</p><p>His family in this timeline had all settled down to an extent. Cherishing each other and the future they could walk toward without fear of daemons or Prophecy.</p><p>But not Deleantur.</p><p>Oh, he wasn’t unhappy, and he certainly hadn’t been left behind by his brothers here. He stayed frequently with either Somnus or Ardyn —or both, when one was visiting the other like they often did—, talking, sparring, teaching or just … enjoying their company —he’d gotten Ardyn addicted to fishing, much to Somnus’s laughing despair—. Aera was a joy to be around as always, even more so now that Deleantur had nieces to quietly dote on. But for all that he was content with the way his life was now … he couldn’t settle. While both brothers had repeatedly made it clear he was welcome to stay permanently in either of their residences, Deleantur just … couldn’t make himself stay.</p><p>Instead, he wandered. All over the continent and many kingdoms that would someday be known only as Lucis, following the wind and clouds and even the occasional wild chocobo herd just to see where they would take him. He helped the people he came across, gathered ingredients for his potions, wrote about the funny stories or incidents that happened along the way to show his brothers later, and even took a few pictures of amazing places with his battered old phone —sparingly, because while he could charge it using lightning magic, he didn’t want to run out of memory or break it by accident—. It was lonely sometimes, being by himself for months on end before he inevitably wandered back to either Insomnia or Taelpar and the family that awaited him there, but for the most part it was … peaceful. Now that he knew he had somewhere to return <b>to</b>, it made the background noise in his head —magic and Old Kings and grief and too many memories— more manageable.</p><p>He wondered sometimes if he did thes because constant travel reminded him of the road trip. Even if he no longer turned on instinct with a question for Ignis or a quip for Prompto and Gladio, he wondered if perhaps the constant change in scenery —and return to familiar places no matter how altered they would be in the future— settled some part of him that still thought he should be doing just that. Driving around in the Regalia or riding his chocobo —who could apparently time-travel at will, because here she was whenever he whistled without any explanation— on some Hunt with the brothers he would never see again. Whatever the reason, a part of Deleantur <b>needed</b> to wander now, and he was content to indulge the urge as long as he knew he had his family to retreat to as anchors when the solitude turned from peaceful to unnerving.</p><p>That wanderlust was part of the reason Deleantur was carefully wading through the thick jungle foliage of one of Galahd’s islands now without Ardyn’s or Somnus’s or Gilgamesh’s knowing. He had explored all sorts of wild places and nooks that would someday —maybe— be part of the Lucis Caelum kingdom, but he had never been to Galahd before. Even most of his ancestors had never set foot in Galahd. The Rogue had, on one of her clandestine missions to secure her throne from the shadows in a time when women were not allowed to rule, and she had also had a Galahdian companion as part of her Retinue for a time. The Wanderer had also stayed in Galahd for several years before moving on, but that was two amid one hundred and thirteen generations. Surely it was time for a visit of his own —his father had gone there too, but Deleantur stayed away from those memories as much as he could, it was too unnerving to get flashbacks of holding <b>himself</b> as a baby or seeing their final goodbye through his father’s eyes—.</p><p>He did have other reasons though. Memories of the Kingsglaive who had fought and bled and died for him —for his father in the war-focused memories Deleantur could never completely suppress—, the men and women who had primarily been from Galahd and had helped him fulfill his destiny in the future-that-wasn’t —had died before ever seeing their home freed—. Even if those people hadn’t been born yet, even if they might never be born because of him, or never have to join a foreign military to reclaim a fallen home, Deleantur … wanted to see their homeland. He wanted to <b>honor</b> them somehow, in a way that was more meaningful to him than the braids he had carefully woven into his hair using the memories of Nyx Ulric’s braids that the Wanderer’s visit to Galahd let him clumsily translate. Even if honoring them just meant seeing the homeland they had longed for so desperately in their place —<em>“Rule well, Young King” </em>still whispered through his mind in the dead of night sometimes, a memory from his father and the Ring itself in honor of the glaive that had the courage to laugh in the faces of the Lucii for the sake of a future he’d never see—.</p><p>A loud, impatient chuff dragged him out of his thoughts just a bit and he jumped over a log as he muttered, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” to his third major reason for coaxing Garuda into powering his sailboat all the way to Galahd. Dawon looked over her massive shoulder with a skeptical expression, her electricity-channelling whiskers twitching in some animal equivalent to a raised eyebrow. Deleantur gingerly pushed aside a cluster of leaves that was a vibrant —probably poisonous— red and met the Messenger’s expression with a deadpan one of his own, “You know, if you’re really in that much of a hurry, you could -I don’t know- let the man with the bum leg <b>ride you</b> instead of running ahead and then getting hissy when he can’t keep up with a thousand plus pounds of pure speed?”</p><p>Dawon <b>hissed</b> at his suggestion, ears flattening like he’d suggested she dye her pretty black coat pink. She tossed her head and bumped him with her shoulder as he finally caught up, conveying her deep offense with just a look and body language that Deleantur was getting far too good at reading, “Oh suck it up,” he scoffed, “you’re a Coeurl. An immortal, <b>quasi-holy </b>Coeurl. Giving me a ride wouldn’t hurt you in the slightest.” She bumped him even harder with her shoulder and then resumed trotting her way through the jungle, heading toward some destination Deleantur couldn’t hope to guess at —he just hoped this trip didn’t end in a fight—.</p><p>He wasn’t certain why Umbra wasn’t his Messenger anymore —he hoped it was because Umbra was busy or just too young by Messenger standards and not dead—, but he definitely missed the days he’d only had to deal with a quiet, well-trained dog of a Messenger and not Dawon. Dawon was older and more powerful to be sure, capable of fighting alongside him when he got into the kinds of trouble that usually led to Ramuh or Garuda swooping in to the rescue, but she was <b>huffy</b>. All of the arrogance and deadly grace and finicky manners of the house cats Deleantur had loved to spoil as Noctis, but none of the cuddles or purring that made putting up with those traits worthwhile. Dawon made no effort to conceal that she thought humans were idiots and Deleantur <b>especially</b> so, even if she was his assigned Messenger now and thus charged with keeping him informed and alive and relatively healthy when out on his own.</p><p>Dawon showed more respect to Deleantur’s <b>chocobo</b> than she did Deleantur himself. Though to be fair, Deleantur would show more respect to the creature that could apparently traverse time-space on a whim without any of the magic and near-death circumstances Deleantur had suffered through to pull it off just once. He had no idea how Cloud time-travelled like that, but he knew she did, the Hands in the royal stable had come to him multiple times in a panic over Cloud disappearing into thin air before their eyes and he just <b>knew</b> somewhere in his bones that it was because she was going back to Whiz’s Chocobo post when he didn’t need her.</p><p>But back to Dawon. The Messenger who had been leading and dragging and harassing him to come to Galahd for about two weeks now —he thought anyway, time was slippery and hard, so it could have been longer—, heedless of his questions or sarcastic commentary. He knew she was leading him somewhere important, she wouldn’t be this insistent otherwise, but it was still annoying to have to jog through the jungle on the heels of a cat who was plenty large enough to give him a ride if she was really that impatient.</p><p>As if fate heard his mental grumbles and decided to mock his hubris, Dawon’s head snapped up, ears pricking and fur bristling at some unknown sound amid the noisy cackling of the jungle. She whirled on him with an urgent snarl and, in a blur of movement, somehow managed to flip him into the air and onto her back without any time to brace on his part, “Whoa-! Dawon!” He clung tight to her fur and clamped his knees like he would on Cloud as Dawon took off without waiting for him to settle into place.</p><p>The thick green foliage —and red and yellow and blue, the jungle was so <b>colorful</b>— around them turned to a blur and Deleantur hunched low over Dawon’s back to keep from getting smacked in the face with the branches that whipped by. He wasn’t sure how far into the jungle Dawon carried him, he was too busy clinging to her fur and praying that she didn’t accidentally knock his head off with a too-low tree branch. Then he felt the rumble building in the ribcage beneath him, the powerful snarl that was building to a war-scream and Ultima Blade dropped faithfully into his hand because Messengers didn’t snarl for no reason —Dawon especially, she clung to her dignity and rarely lost her temper for all her huffiness—. There was a battle coming —just what he <b>hadn’t</b> wanted oh joy— and Deleantur wasn’t going to be the one unprepared when they reached it.</p><p>Dawon erupted from the brush with a scream, lightning arcing out of her whiskers and brushing up against the magic instinctively shielding his skin in a flare of too-bright blue sparks. Deleantur took just enough time to look past the sparks and identify the bright red clothing of the men Dawon was attacking before he flung himself off her back and lunged for the nearest one. The man went down without a sound beyond the wet tear of Ultima Blade ripping through his neck. A second went down from a hilt-deep strike to the heart before he could register the fall of the first. Deleantur whirled away from them, already tracking his next targets and ignoring the part of him that had once been a young prince with a reluctance to kill human opponents —two thousand years of war and fighting and assassinations had stripped him of that, the burning remains of his home had stripped his ability to mourn the loss—.</p><p>Dawon had already downed four of them with her initial lightning blast and claws, the other two men that were left were backing away with wide eyes. One of them hissed something that wasn’t King’s Speech and in the time it took Deleantur to scrounge through his too-long memory for the translation, they had already run away. Deleantur waited a few seconds for them to come back or bring reinforcements, then slowly relaxed his stance and looked around —but he didn’t dismiss Ultima Blade just yet, just in case—.</p><p>It was obvious that he had crashed the tail end of a battle between two … Deleantur was going to assume they were tribes —clans? The words were mostly the same but the connotation was different—. There were more bodies of men and women dressed in red-dyed leather scattered amidst bodies of men and women who were dressed primarily in purple-black colors. They all had the braids and beads of Galahdians and their weapons were too diverse to really determine which side might have had the advantage on that front. But Dawon had been furious and urgent to get here and drive off the last of the Reds, so that meant the Purple-Blacks were … <b>probably</b> the good guys of whatever conflict Deleantur had just plunged headfirst into. Considering Dawon’s self-satisfied look, that also meant that there was probably a survivor around here somewhere…</p><p>There. In the hollow made by a thick tangle of vines and exposed roots. Someone was hiding there.</p><p>Deleantur inched closer, carefully tugged some of the vines aside with one hand while the other kept his sword at the ready in case of attack. A moment later and he flicked Ultima Blade back into armiger in favor of yanking a phoenix down to his hand and pressing it against the too-still chest of the purple-black clad teenager breathing his last. Fire and healing magic flared, backed by Deleantur’s own reserves to drag the teen back from the brink and gasping into consciousness. The teenager scrabbled blindly at Deleantur’s hand on his chest, half-formed words spilling from his lips before he seemed to become aware of Deleantur himself rather than just the vague, blurry concept of a person being too close to his hiding place. Brown eyes blinked at Deleantur in fear and confusion and he garbled something out in Old Galahdian that took Deleantur several moments to translate as, <em>“Who are you? Don’t touch me!”</em></p><p>Deleantur pulled his hand away and raised it in a placating gesture. Caught the wrist of the hand trying to plunge a knife in his face a moment later and clicked his tongue in irritation, “Oi. I’m not-,” the mainland languages wouldn’t work on this kid, not in this era, and he grudgingly let the Wanderer’s memories crowd a little closer so he could swap to the correct language, <em>“I’m not an enemy. Calm down.”</em></p><p>The boy —no more than fifteen by Deleantur’s estimate— tried to tug his wrist free, <em>“Let me go! Son of a-!”</em> Over Deleantur’s shoulder, Dawon shuffled closer to have a look and the boy went ten different shades of pale, none of them relating to his recent blood loss. He feebly twitched his wrist again, his breath coming short and fast, <em>“Behind you. Astrals above, it’s right </em><b><em>behind you</em></b><em>.”</em></p><p>Deleantur blinked, looked over his shoulder to confirm it was just Dawon. She chuffed at him and leaned closer, causing the teenager to give a strangled sob of terror. Deleantur grudgingly let the vines he’d been holding back flop on his shoulder so he could push her muzzle away with a hand, “Give us some space, you’re scaring him.” A bland look indicated how little Dawon cared about the terror of some pathetic human —nice to know the Messengers were always looking out for humanity and cared so much about their emotional health—, but another pointed shove made her back up a few steps and sit down to wash her fur. Deleantur turned back to the teenager and scrounged around for the right Galahdian words, <em>“Are you …</em> uh, what’s the term, <em>beating?”</em> No, that wasn’t right, as evidenced by the panicky glance the teen spared him before staring at Dawon again, <em>“better?”</em> Still not what he was looking for. How did one ask if someone was “okay” in Galahdian? The Wanderer had never been that informal and the Rogue had always focused more on battle terminology.</p><p>A word floated to the forefront, one tinged with his father’s voice and magic, and Deleantur reluctantly let it slide from his lips, <em>“Okay?”</em> There was the word he wanted, <em>“Are you okay?”</em></p><p>
  
  <em>“That Coeurl isn’t eating us.”</em>
</p><p>That wasn’t what Deleantur had asked. He pushed the vines away from his face irritably and tried again, <em>“Are you hurt anywhere else? Do you need heel-</em>, no that’s wrong, <em>healing?”</em></p><p>
  
  <em>“You </em>
  <b>
    <em>pushed</em>
  </b>
  <em> its nose and we’re still alive.”</em>
</p><p>Maybe if Deleantur told Dawon to go wait in the bushes the kid would answer his questions, but one quick glance at her told him she was not going anywhere, especially not with the knife still pointed at Deleantur’s heart —even though he had it handled thank you—. Deleantur sighed and squeezed the wrist he was holding enough to hurt. The teen flinched and refocused on him, Deleantur eased his grip just enough to stop hurting and said, <em>“Do you need healing?”</em></p><p>The boy made a face —either at Deleantur’s futuristic accent or just the words themselves—, <em>“I- there’s a Coeurl </em><b><em>right there</em></b><em>!”</em></p><p>A shrug, <em>“She won’t bite,”</em> a chuff from Dawon in question and he amended, <em>“as long as you don’t fight me.”</em></p><p>The teenager stared at him, something akin to awe creeping onto his face, <em>“You … she’s </em><b><em>yours</em></b><em>? You tamed a Coeurl?”</em></p><p>Deleantur was pretty sure the low noise Dawon made was a profanity-filled denial —she wasn’t tamed by any stretch of the word, thank you— but Deleantur decided not to comment, <em>“She’s a friend. Now, if I give you go-, </em>Astrals curse it what iss up with this language, <em>if I </em><b><em>let </em></b><em>you go, will you try to stab me?”</em> A confused glance from his knife to Deleantur’s face to Dawon still washing her fur just a few feet away. Then a head shake and a pointed loosening of the grip on the knife hilt. For precaution’s sake, Deleantur took the knife out of the boy’s hand entirely before finally letting go of his wrist, <em>“Good.”</em> Deleantur backed away from the hollow, still holding back the vines so he could see the boy, <em>“Can you stand?”</em></p><p>The teenager crawled out of his hiding place with a dazed, wary expression, stood up and <b>twitched</b> when Dawon paused in her washing to stare at him for a moment before ignoring him again. Then he looked over at Deleantur with something definitely too close to reverence for Deleantur’s comfort, <em>“Who … who are you, Honored One?”</em></p><p>“Deleantur,” he said in King’s Speech because at least names needed no translation, <em>“and that’s </em>Dawon<em>. We found you in there, you were badly hurt. Do you have a name?”</em></p><p>The boy looked down at himself in confusion, patting himself over, his hands lingering on the tear in his clothes that exposed his chest from left shoulder to right bicep —where the gaping sword wound had been moments ago—, <em>“I … Eventus. Eventus of Clan…”</em> his eyes caught on the tangled collage of braids in Deleantur’s hair and his face oscillated between hopeful and confused, <em>“You are of Clan Ulric too?”</em></p><p>Deleantur blinked. Where was the kid —Eventus— getting that conclusion? Deleantur tugged almost absently on the braids in question, suddenly wondering if he’d made a mistake somewhere in the pattern. He’d only had the Wanderer’s memories of all sorts of complicated braids, a mirror, and a snapshot-clear image of the glaive who had laughed in the Lucii’s faces to base his braid off of. Considering how much simpler Nyx Ulric’s base braid had been compared to the ones the Wanderer remembered, he’d used that and adapted it to fit the meanings he wanted. But maybe that had been a mistake. Maybe he’d completely messed up the translation of the braids. Maybe he shouldn’t have used Nyx Ulric’s braids as a base after … all …</p><p>Wait.</p><p>“You’re an Ulric?” He blinked a moment later and repeated in Galahdian, <em>“You’re an Ulric?”</em></p><p>Eventus was staring at Deleantur in bafflement, <em>“Yes. Was that not clear?”</em> He reached up to his own head in a panic for a moment, feeling for his braids with urgency before relaxing and going back to being confused, <em>“My braids are in place, and I’m wearing the Clan Colors. You should know that.” </em>A glance at Deleantur’s own sturdy, all black clothing —he’d never gotten over wearing the color of his family line even if it made his life even more hot and miserable— and Eventus wrinkled his nose, <em>“Why aren’t </em><b><em>you</em></b><em> wearing the Clan Colors? Where is Loyalty? Why just Undaunted?”</em></p><p>Okay, now Deleantur was definitely lost in the translation. What colors was Eventus talking about and how could he tell just by looking at Deleantur’s clothes whether he was “wearing” loyalty or not? A glance at Eventus’s own clothes and the clothes of the fallen and he realized that they were wearing purple <b>and</b> black in different degrees —some more purple than black, some more black than purple, some even with a bit of blue mixed in—. The colors must have some kind of attribute attached to them, and Clan Ulric apparently wore purple and black together rather than just going all one or the other. Unlike Deleantur, who was apparently walking around as an “undaunted” banner —whatever that was supposed to mean—.</p><p>Deleantur had a momentary revelation that he was about to walk into probably the most complicated mess of his life next to world-saving prophecies and memory-absorbing magic Crystals. He silently made peace with this fact and then tried to run damage control for the cultural misunderstandings he was apparently flaunting on his head and clothes, <em>“I just … don’t like to wear purple all that much, that’s all.”</em></p><p>Eventus’s face closed off and he took half a step away and Deleantur sighed as he realized he had just said the <b>exact wrong thing</b>, <em>“Don’t like-?”</em> It was almost funny watching the teen’s face oscillate between disgust and confused reverence —apparently not liking the color purple was almost enough to erase his “taming” of Dawon—, <em>“Who </em><b><em>are</em></b><em> you?”</em></p><p>Deleantur did his best not to roll his eyes, <em>“I told you. Deleantur.”</em> Eventus looked like he was going to demand something else, so Deleantur cut him off, <em>“Look, I think we have more important things that care- more important things </em><b><em>to</em></b><em> care about. Like the men who attacked you and what is going on.”</em> Eventus looked around then for the first time, truly <b>saw</b> his surroundings, and Deleantur ached at the raw grief and anger that crossed the teen’s face —a mix Deleantur himself knew from that fateful road trip, a mix he had lived a hundred times over through Crystal memory—. Deleantur respectfully stood back and waited a few minutes for the boy to smother a sob and flit from body to body, heedless of Dawon’s presence as he gently closed eyes and retrieved weapons —as he cut off a single braid from each head and reverently slipped them into an inner pocket of his clothes—.</p><p>When Eventus stood and faced him again, he was remarkably dry-eyed and calm —hiding his grief, shoving it down to focus on more important things—, <em>“I need to return to my village. I need to- I need to warn them that the Bellum are here, that they are wearing Wrath-.”</em> Eventus hesitated, then gestured toward Deleantur’s braids, <em>“You are Clan Ulric the same as I, are you not? Even if you don’t-. Will you come?”</em></p><p>Deleantur considered the question carefully, glanced from the bodies to Dawon, who gave him a dark look and gestured her head imperiously to the teen she had apparently dragged him off to Galahd for the express purpose of saving. That probably meant he should go with Eventus and help, even if he didn’t like the thought of walking into another conflict —another war— without knowing all the facts. But then … Eventus was apparently an Ulric.</p><p>Deleantur owed a debt to an Ulric. One he could never repay. He supposed Eventus and his clan would do as proxies. He nodded and gestured toward the jungle, <em>“Lead the way.”</em></p><p>Eventus turned out to be almost as fast in the jungle as Dawon when she wasn’t sprinting. Every movement the teen made of efficient and fast, using springy tree roots to clear rocks or thick knots of brush, swinging over steep creek banks with thick vines, and in general seeming to dance through the jungle with an unconscious ease that made Deleantur’s aching back and legs jealous. He kept up well enough, but even his years of travel experience and Crystal-added memories couldn’t make his steps as effortless or quick as Eventus’s. Of course, the teen was obviously in a hurry to return to his home after what had happened, which Deleantur didn’t blame him for, but it was still annoying to have Dawon making contemptuous noises and obvious non-verbal comparisons behind Eventus’s back as she trotted along beside Deleantur —Deleantur was vaguely surprised Eventus dared turn his back on Dawon considering his fear and awe of Coeurls—.</p><p>They smelled smoke before they saw the village. Eventus faltered in his running just long enough to sniff the air and look <b>devastated</b> before he took off without a word at a much faster speed. Dawon snarled urgently and Deleantur clambered onto her back without further prompting, holding on tight as she careened through the undergrowth to explode out into an area in which all the jungle brush had been cleared, leaving only the trees and village buildings.</p><p>Which were currently under attack and partially on fire. Because of course they were.</p><p>Calm settled in his mind as his magic surged to the surface of his skin. He slid off Dawon’s back, twin blades sliding into his hands without prompting or conscious choice. Dawon charged into the thick of the battle going on at the village outskirts, lightning crackling off her whiskers as she screamed, but Deleantur stood still a moment to take in what he could. It was the Reds from before —the Bellum? Eventus had called them that at least— fighting the villagers who were dressed in the same colors as Eventus. The villagers had the fight fairly well in hand, they were fierce fighters and, aside from the few buildings that had caught on fire, it seemed like the Reds weren’t doing that much damage —beyond a body count, but Deleantur didn’t have time to mourn that right now—. Of course, with Dawon charging in like the death cat she was, the Reds would soon have a lot more to worry about than just holding their own against the Ulrics.</p><p>Movement caught his eye from further inside the village, quick and subtle and <b>red</b> against the backdrop of jungle and wood huts and black-purple villagers. The Rogue’s memories stirred in his head, hissing <em>infiltrators</em> and <em>assassins</em> and Deleantur was running after them before he could think twice. One or two Reds involved in the main fight spotted him, but Deleantur didn’t even slow down as he ducked under their sloppy charges and dragged his blades through their throats —they were amateur, hasty, these were no imperial elites or Niflheim Magitek troopers or blooded Altissian assassins, these were just raiders looking to take what they could and burn the rest—. The Ulrics —he assumed they were all Ulrics, some of them were wearing more blue and green than purple but all wore traces of black— didn’t even glance his way. His clothes were black enough to pass even without any purple or blue or green mixed in. That and everyone was busy screaming over Dawon’s sudden arrival and rampant murder spree of the Reds.</p><p>He ducked around simple dwellings and sidestepped rushing people with barely a thought, his eyes constantly tracking those muted flickers of red that led him deeper-deeper-deeper into the village until he glanced forward and spotted a large lodge-type building. It was in the rough center of the village and was older, sturdier. The only building made out of stone where the rest were wood and leathers and brush —<em>elders and children,</em> whispered the Wanderer sadly, <em>honorless strike against the weak,</em> snarled the Conqueror, <em>what did you expect of assassins but for them to go after the little and the old, </em>scoffed the Rogue in a fury that burned in Deleantur’s veins—. He caught a glimpse of Red entering the window on the side, saw that the Black-Purples —Ulrics— who had been charged to guard it were already dead. The infiltrators were clearly planning to go in there and murder the elders and children, maybe even take a few of the younger or prettier ones as prizes and slaves —<em>chains and screaming and blood and fire and lost in an endless maze, too many memories over too many lives with too much pain-not-again-not-</em><b><em>again</em></b>—.</p><p>Deleantur’s magic rippled outward as he reached the doors, forced them to fly off their hinges without physically touching them as he charged inside without slowing. The first of the ten Reds was killed by the doors, smashing into it at just the wrong angle and sent flying in a limp sprawl. The fourth was the one who actually saw him and managed to scream a warning before Deleantur’s blades found his heart and he kicked the corpse to the far wall. The second and third were already dead with a torn open throat and a blade through the skull respectively.</p><p>The remaining three whirled away from the elders they had been about to tear apart for trying to shield the sobbing little ones. One of the Reds lunged at him with a spear while the second bounded sideways to get a clear shot at him with her bow and arrow. Deleantur ducked under the spear lunge, sidestepped the next two swipes before stepping into his opponent’s guard and bringing one blade slicing upward.</p><p>The wooden spear haft shattered into two pieces, the Red holding it leaned away from Deleantur’s other blade going for his throat and began spinning the two halves of the spear like they where dual weapons. Deleantur let his magic curl under his skin and pull him half-in-half-out of reality so that the spear head slid harmlessly through air where his temple was-but-wasn’t then threw one blade out and away to —<em>strike down the arrow the woman had finally dared to fire before it could reach his ribs</em>— free up one hand to grab the blade-less spear half coming for his neck. The Red faltered, gaping in surprise and disbelief at Deleantur’s warp dodge, then he screamed in fearful shock as Deleantur clenched his hand on the spear haft and willed it to <b>freeze</b> —not burn, there were other things that might catch fire, just like how he couldn’t bring these people to their knees with his raw magic because there were children and elders nearby who would <b>die</b> from the weight of his power—.</p><p>The Red abandoned his offense, jerked his frostbitten hand away from the frozen over spear haft then gurgled in pain as the blade he’d forgotten Deleantur still had slid through his ribcage once-twice-thrice. Deleantur kicked over the body and turned toward the archer woman —the last, the elders and one of the tweens had fallen on the third and killed him with their own hidden weapons and fire hardened walking sticks—. Deleantur took a deep, slow breath to keep his magic from unfurling and crushing everything around him in the weight of his fury when he saw that she had dropped her bow and now had a small dagger in one hand while her other arm…</p><p><b>“Woman,”</b> Deleantur hissed and in his voice he could <em>hear-feel-remember</em> the thunderous tones of the Lucii —Rogue and Oracle and Fierce and Father and so-many-too-many-others—, <b>“release the child and you might live.”</b> The woman’s already bloodless skin got paler at the sound of his voice —their voices, the voices of kings and queens long gone but here and furious— but she didn’t let go of the whimpering toddler pinned against her body by her arm.</p><p>She pressed her dagger blade closer to the vulnerable skin of the child and wheezed, <em>“Stay b-back-! Stay back or he’s dead!”</em></p><p>Fury said to lunge, the Old Kings and Queens seething in the back of his mind said to just <b>let go</b> of his magic and let the pressure drive her to her knees and steal the strength from her bones —but those would kill the child, those would possibly kill everyone else in the building and Deleantur didn’t want that—. He narrowed his eyes and took a slow step back in obedience. She jerked her chin towards the blade still clenched in his hand, <em>“D-drop it.”</em> His fingers squeezed tighter on the hilt, then he slowly crouched down and set the blade on the floor. With a flick of his wrist he sent it sliding across the floor to rest at her feet. He looked up and saw her muscles beginning to relax, one foot coming up to set on the blade and pin it down.</p><p>Her foot was still half an inch away from the scrollwork of the blade when Deleantur mentally <b>tugged</b> with his magic and fell into the <em>spaces-between-worlds-time-reality-life-death</em>. He ripped clear of the gaps with a crack of <em>magic-power-light</em>, hand already closing on the hilt of the blade at the woman’s feet as he lunged upward with it in one hand while his other reached for the child’s neck.</p><p>His blade slid home in the same instant hers tried to bury into young, vulnerable flesh as a flinch response to the <em>crack-snap-light</em> of his warp. The dagger instead skidded against his black gauntlet, bit into the flesh of his forearm and got stuck there in the mix of leather armor and skin-blood-bone. Deleantur breathed past the pain and watched the life bleed from the woman’s eyes with a grim rumble of, <b>“I told you to let the child go.”</b> Her body went slack and Deleantur used his bleeding arm to pull the child clear of the body while his other hand absently tugged his blade free of the body.</p><p>For a moment, there was no sound beyond the muffled chaos outside and the sob of the children. Deleantur tilted his head back toward the ceiling and breathed, carefully pulled his magic back into his core and pushed back the clamoring voices of memories that didn’t really belong to him. Then he lowered his head and opened his eyes again —when had they closed?—. He gently let go of the toddler and turned toward the elders he could sense skittishly approaching him. He spotted his other blade, the one he’d thrown earlier, in a gnarled old hand and frowned, “Give that-,” he paused, tugged tiredly at his limited knowledge of Galahdian and his strained manners, <em>“return that to me. Please.”</em></p><p>The old woman, hair done up in an elaborate nest of braids and beads and ribbons that must have meant something very impressive, glanced shakily from the blade to him, then firmed, <em>“This belongs to a Chieftain and a Chieftain alone. How did you come by it?”</em> Deleantur stared at her in momentary confusion, then fully registered what blades he had pulled out of his armiger to fight. He almost laughed at the irony —<em>“This is not an order from a king to his glaive this is a </em><b><em>plea</em></b><em> from one man to another-” “Rule well, Young King”</em>—. Ulric’s Kukris. The blades he had pried free of the corpse of a daemon in the last days of Insomnia, the ones he had <em>sensed-known-recognized</em> from memories that weren’t his own and offered back to Libertus Ostium —they had belonged to his friend after all, his brother-in-arms and fellow Galahdian— but Ostium had just told him to keep them with tears in his eyes, insisted that Nyx would want them to still be in service to the king even if he wasn’t there to wield them. He hadn’t … he hadn’t realized they belonged to Chieftains.</p><p>It explained a few things though.</p><p>He carefully pulled the dagger free of his arm, pushed a wave of healing magic into it without a thought and then held out his hand for the kukri, <em>“It is mine. I …” </em>words caught in his throat, a hundred thousand ways of explaining a situation he didn’t think these people would believe and a million more ways to just lie. Finally, he reached up and tugged on one of his braids to draw her attention to it, then held out his hand again, <em>“Please. It belonged to a great … a great man of my kin,” </em>because Nyx Ulric might have not been a Lucis Caelum, but he had been a Kingsglaive, he had been with Regis when Deleantur’s father had died —and Noctis hadn’t been there, hadn’t even known— and he had wielded the full magic of the Lucii for a time. He deserved to remembered as family, and if Deleantur had lived in his own time, in the aftermath of the Endless Night, then Nyx Ulric would have been added to the royal tapestries and his name would have been added to the memorial plaque with the rest of Noctis’s family —alongside the rest of the Kingsglaive who fought and died for him and those others in ancient times who had been adopted for their light and bravery and loyalty that Deleantur <b>remembered</b> far more clearly than he had any right to—.</p><p>He looked into the elder’s pale face and repeated softly, <em>“He was kin. These blades passed on to me when he died.” </em>He saw her hesitate and took a shuddering breath —he wasn’t going to fight these people that he had just saved, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, let them withhold the blade—, <em>“Please, Great Matriarch. It’s all I have left of him.”</em></p><p>The wary fear that had lined her eyes —fear of this stranger, this man with unnatural power, he could understand that fear— faded and was replaced by something soft that he couldn’t … couldn’t quite identify. She stepped out of the protective line of other elders and gently placed the kukri in his outstretched hand, <em>“Take care not to throw it around next time then.”</em></p><p>Memory flickered behind his eyes, snapshots of a fearless glaive flickering back and forth through the air like a demented bird, throwing and warping even more often than Noctis found tolerable like it was nothing. In the back of his head he could hear the stories passed around in the dingy subway base, the glaives all too pleased to share memories of their Hero for the curious and mournful young king who <b>cared</b> about them, who wanted to <b>remember</b> them and their sacrifices and lost kin —he had only been with them for maybe two weeks, but he remembered their stories and treasured their names even now—. He pushed it away and smiled as he pulled the kukri close and inspected them both for damages, <em>“Yes</em> Ma’am, <em>I’ll be more careful next time.”</em></p><p>Some of the elders startled, though the woman just narrowed her eyes a fraction and stated, <em>“You are Ulric, but you were not born on Galahdian shores.”</em></p><p>Deleantur bobbed his head in reluctant agreement, then tensed and whirled at the sound of multiple pairs of running feet. He put himself firmly between the doorway and those inside, raised his kukri in preparation to fight. Paused and huffed as Eventus stumbled in, wild-eyed and at the front of a pack of equally frantic Ulrics, all bearing weapons and looking furious and heartsick —oh, they had realized they’d been infiltrated, they no doubt had entered bracing for the sight of a slaughter—. The warriors in the doorway all gaped and looked around in confusion until Eventus pointed at Deleantur and started sputtering, then everyone stared between them as Eventus yelled, <em>“You! This is where you went?”</em></p><p>Deleantur cautiously lowered his kukri, but didn’t leave his defensive stance yet, just in case someone got the wrong idea about his presence, <em>“…Yes. I saw some of the-,”</em> he couldn’t remember their clan name, gestured down at the bodies instead, <em>“them, sneaking inside the village, so I chased after them.”</em> He tilted his head and considered Eventus’s sputtering, <em>“Your clan had the main battle handled, and Dawon was helping you. I thought this was more important.”</em></p><p>One of the elders behind him began to ask who Dawon was, then everyone yelped in shock and fear as Dawon carelessly shouldered her way through the crowd in the doorway and came to a stop at Deleantur’s side. She gave him a smug look and a flash of red-stained teeth before sitting down and beginning to meticulously wash off her silky black fur and whiskers. Deleantur rolled his eyes at her, “Nice of you to finally show up.” He huffed in King’s Speech, “It wasn’t like I was outnumbered and dealing with a hostage situation over here.” Dawon just gave him a bland look that stated if he couldn’t handle a few enemies and a crying hostage than he wasn’t worth her time. Deleantur, having no fear of death via Messenger, tugged scoldingly on one of her long, lightning storing whiskers. She growled at him but didn’t retaliate, so Deleantur decided to consider than an apology.</p><p>He looked up and realized that not only had the crowd of well-armed Ulrics multiplied, they were all <b>staring</b> at him in astounded awe and confusion.</p><p>Right. Snarking at and tugging the whisker of a Coeurl wasn’t normal for these people.</p><p>Hadn’t the glaives mentioned that a black Coeurl was their sacred symbol or something?</p><p>He sighed and slid his kukri into the emergency sheaths he kept on his belt —no sense scaring them with armiger if he could help it, even if several of them had already seen his magic—. He had a feeling that this was all going to get complicated, and that it would be all Dawon’s fault somehow.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Stella Ulric of the village of Skye was many things. She was a full-fledged warrior of her clan, she was a blooded Huntress of the Loyal Path, eldest child and only daughter of the village’s Ulric Chieftain —the honorable Candor Ulric, High Chieftain of Skye and blooded Hunter of the Watchful Path—, and next in line to inherit the title of Ulric Chieftess, just to name a few. She had spent her life in the jungles around Skye, learning, fighting, honing, and leading. She had completed her Woman’s Journey within a single year —a record in the village—, bringing with her a necklace of teeth from the Coeurl that she had been blessed enough to bring down when it decided to test her mettle in a battle to the death. She had sworn to serve her home at all costs and protect it from all threats, just like her father before her.</p>
<p>Except now there was a threat that no one knew what to do with, or how to get rid of. Including Stella.</p>
<p>It was that cursed foreign-born. The one who called himself Deleantur and made no mention of the clan or the mourning braid he wore in his hair, who practically threw his Undaunted in their faces yet didn’t temper it with any Loyalty or Watchfulness or Protection. Who wielded the kukri of a Chieftain yet who openly admitted to having no village of his own to rule. If there was ever a reason to listen to the Elders when they warned of the confusion and dangerous unpredictability that would curse a child born of Galahdian blood but not on Galahdian shores, he was it.</p>
<p>He was dangerous. Unpredictable. Yet the village couldn’t be rid of him without destroying their own honor because he had <b>saved</b> them. He had indebted the entire village to him when he swept in on his Coeurl companion —<b>black </b>Coeurl! How a crazy foreign-born had managed that level of blessing Stella didn’t know— and single-handedly saved the Elders and the younglings from being murdered by the Bellum. Stella and her father would have already owed him personal debts for saving Stella’s little brother, Eventus, but by saving the Elders and the younglings, he had saved their past and their future, the pillars of their village. The debt they owed him was <b>enormous</b>.</p>
<p>And he knew it too. Which led to the current danger.</p>
<p>In the wake of the attack and Deleantur’s arrival, after Eventus had formally announced Deleantur to the village and Deleantur had given only vague answers to her father’s questions —where had he come from? Where was his village? As an Ulric, why had he waited so long to set foot on the shores of his blood homeland?—, her father had tried to offer a proper price to pay the debt owed by offering him the headdress of a village high warrior. A place in the village as one of their most honored warriors even though he was a <b>stranger</b>. Deleantur had just given the headdress a speculative look and then turned it down with a variant of the traditional, “Thank you, but … I have no need for this gift.” <em>This offer is generous, but not enough to pay your debt.</em></p>
<p>Stella had watched with mounting frustration and fury over the next two weeks that passed as he accepted a house in the village —the outskirts, because debt or no, no one wanted a Coeurl who answered only to a stranger in the heart of their home—, which did absolve a sliver of the debt, but only a sliver. Practically nothing when it was really just a more permanent version of the Law of Hospitality. Deleantur then proceeded to refuse each and every debt-price offered with the same bemused, condescending smile —that pretended to be confused, as if he didn’t know exactly how much they owed him— and a polite, “Thank you, but I have no need for this gift.”</p>
<p>Price after price was suggested and offered —finest weaponry, an entire herd of the spiracorn her village had finally domesticated after five generations of careful breeding, even a place among the Hunt Masters who oversaw the training and rearing of the next generation—. Price after price was turned down. He had the entire village in his debt and it was clear he intended to exploit that for all it was worth, all while hiding his greed behind a facade of quiet bemusement and gentle words.</p>
<p>Stella knew that her father, Chief Isidora —the Ostium Chief and her father’s friend since childhood—, and the Elders were debating on whether something drastic had to be done. On what kind of price could possibly be offered that would finally satiate this stranger Eventus had led to their village —something she knew her little brother regretted deeply now—. She knew that if something was not done, some of the younger warriors who were already on edge from news of the Bellum clan’s renewed raiding might try to remove Deleantur by force. Which would not only fail —she had heard the stories told by the Elders and younglings, of how he wielded the power of the Storm itself and could forge blades from will and air—, but would also place the entire village into a debt that would could only be paid by blood sacrifice.</p>
<p>It was a looming fate Stella could not allow.</p>
<p>So, she swallowed her anger and spite and, for the sake of her village, ventured out into the jungle looking for stones. It took her two days to find one that was both workable and she thought might appeal to the foreign-born. A rich lavender-blue thing that glowed faintly in the sunlight and was vaguely similar to the shade of Deleantur’s eyes. After that, she made for the old shrine to Ramuh that her village had always gone to in times of trouble, carefully shaped the stone into a glittering bead there on the cracked stone floor, begging every step of the way that this would work.</p>
<p>Once the bead was holed and polished to a round, smooth shine, she carefully slid the largest two Coeurl fangs from her own necklace —her symbol of maturity and power and freedom, the necklace made of whisker sinew and teeth as proof that she had not only survived but <b>prevailed</b> against nature’s ruling predator when it had chosen to test her— and made a new necklace to carry them. She carved delicate designs into the teeth, symbols of Ramuh learned from the old shrine, symbols of blessing that she then carefully filled in with paint of black —Undaunted, Deleantur’s chosen color—, purple —Loyalty, her own Path—, and dawn gold —Love, her motive for doing this when it made every inch of her soul scream—.</p>
<p>Necklace and bead complete, Stella took one last moment to stand in the overgrown shrine and breathe. Then she returned to the village and made straight for Deleantur. For better or worse, he was already in the center of the village when she found him, trying to talk some of the other villagers into letting him help rebuild their homes —and let him drive their debt higher? Not going to happen—. The chatter of the villagers and glares in Deleantur’s direction tapered off as they spotted Stella, decked out in the full gear of her Path and clenching a necklace and bead in her fist. The mental checklist in her head filled in the last blank. She had the bead and necklace, she had witnesses paying attention.</p>
<p>Now she just needed Deleantur to <b>take it</b>.</p>
<p>“Honored Deleantur,” she forced out the formality, forced her voice to stay as level as possible —even though he didn’t deserve to be called honored, no matter that he had the blessing of a black Coeurl—. Deleantur looked away from his argument and a few feet away, his Coeurl’s head rose in interest. Deleantur made a low noise of acknowledgement and Stella held out her hand, palm open so he could see the newly made bead glittering in the light, “Please accept this gift from me, Stella Ulric of the Village of Skye, as thanks and gratitude for your aid to this village.”</p>
<p>She could already see in his eyes before she had finished speaking that he was going to say no. He was going to turn her down and demand an even <b>higher</b> price, drive her village right into ruin. Then he paused. Glanced over at his Coeurl who had gotten up and now stood at his shoulder. The feline huffed and twitched her whiskers, which must have meant something to Deleantur, because he looked back at Stella and … assessed her. Truly assessed her, with eyes that deepened and aged until Stella could barely breathe from the depth of them, the piercing edge that felt like it could skin her down to her bones. Peel her open and reveal every secret hidden beneath. She had never seen Deleantur’s supernatural abilities in person, but forcing herself to meet that gaze … she could believe it. Could picture it much more easily than when he acted like a simple foreign-born and spoke what should have been his mother tongue with a rough accent.</p>
<p>As suddenly as the assessment had begun, it was over. He looked down at the gift in her hand and Stella belatedly remembered how to breathe. She could feel the rest of the villagers who were witnessing it forget how to breathe themselves as Deleantur gingerly reached out and took the necklace and bead from her hand. He half started to say something in the language of the foreign shores, then shook his head slightly and switched over to Galahdian, “You, um, you honor me, Stella Ulric of the Village of Skye. I humbly accept your gift.”</p>
<p>Despite the fury still churning in her stomach, she felt her shoulders unknot in relief. He had taken her price. The village’s debt was paid. Now they were stuck with him, but in a way they could defend themselves from if he tried anything else. She had done it. Protected her village.</p>
<p>She watched Deleantur loop the necklace around his neck and tried to convince herself that she should feel happy. She watched him clumsily try to braid the bead into his hair and finally let a touch of her fury bleed through as she took it out of his hands with a curt, “Let me.” Deleantur went obediently still as she tugged her fingers through his shoulder-length hair and formed the proper braid with curt movements. She slid the bead into place and stepped back with a brisk nod, “There.”</p>
<p>Deleantur smiled at her, a tiny, halfway shy thing that was at odds with his manipulative nature, “Thank you.”</p>
<p>Stella turned and walked away before she had to talk herself out of knifing him. By now someone would have already taken word of her actions and Deleantur’s acceptance to her father and brother, so she could focus on all the preparations that came after … after.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Deleantur blinked and paused, one foot still in the doorway of the small house —more of a robust hut really— that the villagers of Skye had insisted on giving him. There was someone else inside. He leaned forward, peering through the doorway to take a look at who would be clattering around inside his house and why his house now smelled like roasted meat. It was Eventus’s sister, the ferocious woman with dark blond hair and violet blue eyes that looked like she was perpetually on the verge of murdering him. What had her name been? He’d said it just earlier that day before he went out to explore the ruins around the village … Stella. That was it.</p>
<p>Why was Stella Ulric cooking meat in his house?</p>
<p>Deleantur took a step back, letting the heavy fabric covering that served as a door —apparently only the big lodge in the center of the village got to have proper doors— fall back into place as he turned to Dawon in confusion, “Is … Is that Stella in there?” He whispered to his Messenger. Dawon looked at him like he was an idiot, bumped his back with her head in a signal to just hurry up and go inside and see for himself.</p>
<p>He did, and … yes. That was Stella Ulric cooking over the hearth with more skill than he ever could —and also with a lot more repressed tension and anger—. She looked up at his entry, only stiffened a fraction at the sight of Dawon padding her way in behind him. She dipped her head in greeting and Deleantur hovered awkwardly for a moment before Stella curtly gestured for him to sit down at the low table. He hesitantly plopped down onto the hard-packed dirt floor, not wanting to provoke the Galahdian woman currently holding a large knife into attacking him like he knew she <b>wanted</b> to do. He didn’t know why she was here, but he wasn’t going to ask in case this was some well-known, unspoken custom of hospitality he should just “know”. Knowing his luck, questioning that kind of custom would be a mortal insult that could only be resolved by a duel to the death or something.</p>
<p>The new bead in his hair felt oddly heavy.</p>
<p>Dinner was a stilted, awkward affair, with Dawon being the only one who really enjoyed herself while Deleantur tried to figure out how to hold polite conversation with a woman who radiated hate but still maintained impeccable manners. He wordlessly helped clear the table once they were done, refusing to wilt under her stare as he did so. By the time he had hauled the dishes out to the nearby washing stream —indoor plumbing how he missed thee— and then back to the house, it was theoretically time to go to bed.</p>
<p>Except Stella was … already in it. He hovered for a split second by the alcove where his surprisingly comfy bed lay, already claimed by the Galahdian woman who had broken into his house today and apparently decided to take ownership of it.</p>
<p>…Fair enough. At this point he wouldn’t be too surprised if it <b>was</b> her house and that he’d only been allowed free reign of it for a certain period of time because of some Galahdian hospitality custom —Galahdians were strange, even by his time-traveling standards—.</p>
<p>With a mournful sigh, Deleantur stepped away from the alcove and instead settled down on the floor against Dawon’s side. Dawon hissed irritably at his intrusion, but he hushed her with a grumpy swat to her nose and low, “Look, I either sleep with you or I sleep with the woman who wants to gut me and <b>then</b> what would you tell the Astrals about how you failed your guard duty?”</p>
<p>Dawon gave him another stare that indicated he was a moron, then licked his hair once or twice in forgiveness and settled down to sleep. Deleantur settled more firmly against her side and resigned himself to a dreary night of sleeping on a hard dirt floor with a fuzzy, grumbly Coeurl pillow. At least she was warm, and hopefully tomorrow he’d figure out what was going on and find a work around. Or maybe life would have mercy for once and this situation would resolve itself without his input.</p>
<p>It didn’t, and after too many days of tiptoeing around the house and sleeping on the floor to not enrage the already furious Galahdian woman now apparently living there —too many days of Eventus and other villagers glaring hate and refusing to talk—, Deleantur had enough. He took off into the jungle in the early morning hours, wandered into the nearest ruins and then out further, letting time slide away from him like ribbons of water, not even trying to keep track of the hours and days like he usually struggled to do. It was quieter out here, not in the lack of noise —wildlife was very noisy in a jungle— but in the lack of tension. There were no villagers to look at him strangely, no veiled glares and mutters of things he didn’t understand behind his back, no tiptoeing around a furious Stella for fear of doing something else wrong in this strange culture.</p>
<p>He wished Dawon would let him just leave already. Go back to Ardyn and Somnus for a while before his wanderlust pulled him away again. But every time he started off in the direction of the coast, Dawon snarled and snapped and herded him back. Apparently his job here wasn’t done, no matter how much he wished it was —how much he wanted to call down the Astrals and yell at them to do their own dirty work for once rather than using him for it—.</p>
<p>It was while he brooded over the problem out in some forgotten, overgrown temple that Deleantur tasted suppressed ozone on his tongue and felt magic stir around him before-, <b>“King of Crystal.”</b></p>
<p>Deleantur sat up, anger and homesickness fading in favor of surprise, “…Ramuh?” The old man in front of him bobbed his head calmly, the gleaming, lightning-bright eyes in his weathered face the only outward sign that Deleantur wasn’t looking at a random old traveller. Deleantur blinked twice, then found himself patting the mossy stone next to him in silent invitation. Ramuh shuffled forward and folded slowly down where Deleantur had indicated, huffing slightly like he had joints that genuinely hurt from age when the Astral himself was almost ageless. Deleantur didn’t bother hiding his stare, “…I didn’t know you had a human form.”</p>
<p>The Fulgarian’s face folded up into a faint smile that deepened the wrinkles on his face into tiny canyons, <b>“This one has not needed this form in many a year,”</b> he rumbled, his voice a strange mix of soft —human— bass and an undertone of crackling magic that vibrated down to Deleantur’s bones with suppressed power, <b>“but once upon a time this one walked freely and joyfully among men. Teaching them the ways of justice and stories of safe passage, granting wisdom to lords and Blessing to the wild kin.”</b></p>
<p>Deleantur stared, realized quite suddenly that Ramuh had braids in this form. Woven into his beard like a web of stories and beads Deleantur could only translate a fragment of. The patterns were familiar though, and he raised his eyebrows, “You Blessed the Galahdians.”</p>
<p><b>“Once. A long time ago.”</b> Ramuh ran gnarled fingers over his waist-length silver beard and the glittering beads that winked in it like a thousand fragments of color, gaze turning eerily distant and ageless with memory —Deleantur wondered if that was how he looked to Ardyn and Somnus some days, too old for his skin and too full of memory—, <b>“The Infernian was not the only one to walk among the peoples of Our Star, and Bahamut was not the first to grant Blessing upon a people.”</b> Ramuh smiled again and it was achingly sad, <b>“Once, Chosen King, we walked among our charges and Knew them. We Blessed them and guided them in our own ways, and what few descendants of them are left we still favor.”</b></p>
<p>Deleantur rolled that over in his head in surprise. Felt a moment of disorientation that he didn’t … he didn’t know that. He had no memory of that. Being in the past usually left him feeling like he knew too much, yet here was something he’d never known, “What happened?”</p>
<p>Ramuh’s smile fell and overhead, the storm clouds that had formed out of nowhere rumbled unhappily, <b>“Solheim. They took what should not have been touched, defiled what was most precious to us. Then, after their great sins, the Infernian’s rage knew no restraint. Made no distinction between those humans who had betrayed him and those who belonged to us instead.”</b> Ramuh tilted his chin in the direction of the ocean, <b>“My chosen survived, however few, by way of their islands and jungles. Leviathan’s children … did not.”</b></p>
<p>That explained a lot of things and nothing at the same time. Deleantur chewed on the information before sighing, “Why did you come down here? It can’t be to tell me ancient history.”</p>
<p>Ramuh paused, shook himself loose of his memories in a manner that was more human than any gesture Deleantur had seen from an Astral before. The elderly man smoothed his intricately embroidered robes before looking up at Deleantur with an oddly gentle expression, <b>“This one has come because the Beloved Chosen is in distress.”</b></p>
<p>Deleantur narrowed his eyes, “I didn’t summon you.”</p>
<p> <b>“No. But this one can feel your heart. All of us can. Your heart bleeds because of this one’s people, so this one has come to your aid.”</b></p>
<p>Deleantur laughed bitterly and shook his head, “Unless you can somehow make the entire village stop hating me or want to tell Dawon to knock it off and let me go back to the mainland, I don’t think you can help.”</p>
<p>Ramuh heaved himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the old, twisting staff that Deleantur could sense hid the true form of Ramuh’s chosen weapon, <b>“This one cannot directly ease that pain, nor can this one turn aside a Messenger from her duty. There is still something that must be done that can only be done with your presence here, Chosen King. You cannot return to the Mystic and the Sage yet. However,”</b> Ramuh gestured for Deleantur to get up and follow him, <b>“this one can help you ease your own way. Come. This one has much to show you.”</b></p>
<p>So Deleantur stood and followed, and Ramuh led him into the jungle and … spoke. He told Deleantur some of the Tales of the Isles, its beginnings and histories, its foundations and the most sacred of its laws. Deleantur suspected that there were many stories Ramuh skipped intentionally, there just wasn’t enough time to teach him more than the basic, most important ones in between their tasks. Ramuh led him to the old shrines and showed him the precious stones hidden within and told him to choose one for Stella to craft as a bead. He showed Deleantur an albino Behemoth, ancient and proud and dangerous and told him to strike it down. He led Deleantur through the undergrowth and showed him the camp of the Reds, dangerously close to where Deleantur thought the village of Skye might be —he hadn’t been keeping track of where he was in relation to it—, and told him to <b>listen</b>.</p>
<p>So Deleantur gently broke off a fragment of stone the color of Lucian blue mixed with soft lavender, sunset orange, and rippling gold. He felled the albino Behemoth and stored its claws, teeth, horns, fur, and meat in his armiger. The camp of Reds —Bellum, he dimly recalled Eventus calling them Bellum— spoke of many things, unaware of Deleantur listening nearby, and so he learned of the Raids, of the chief who had overthrown the other Bellum chiefs, united the entire Bellum Clan from its scattered villages and was aiming to conquer as much of Galahd as he could for power. That they were planning another assault on the villages close to Skye, though they were avoiding Skye for now because of the rumors of the Coeurl that had blessed them and the stranger with lightning for blood —Dawon and him, Deleantur realized—.</p>
<p>Ramuh led Deleantur away and taught him how to make a bead out of the stone he had plucked, how to engrave it with designs of his choice to give it meaning —he chose a tiny engraving of sylleblossoms, a wish for peace and healing for a woman who seemed so angry and hurt all the time—. He showed Deleantur how to use his magic to tan the hide of the Behemoth and how to carve the horns into great trumpets, how to take the smallest of the massive teeth and string together a bulky necklace. The other claws and fangs were cleaned and hollowed out, to serve, Ramuh explained gently, as blade hilts and smaller hunting trumpets.</p>
<p>Finally, Ramuh led Deleantur back to the edge of the village of Skye and disappeared with a gentle touch and a murmur that Deleantur would persevere, he just needed patience. Complicated bundle of prizes in armiger, bead and necklace in hand, and information in mind, Deleantur slipped back into the village. Everyone stared at him as he passed, whispered in a mix of shock and outrage that made him want to hunch his shoulders.</p>
<p>He found Stella talking agitatedly with the Chief, the woman who was always <b>with</b> the Chief, Eventus, and several Elders. They all looked up and stared at his approach with a mix of surprise and anger that he didn’t understand until Stella stalked over to him and snarled that he had been missing without a word for <b>two weeks</b> and where had he gone? Why had he not left word? Deleantur bit back the retort that he wasn’t a part of the village and could come and go as he pleased and instead held out the necklace of Behemoth teeth and the bead to her. Stella froze with wide eyes and Deleantur hoped Ramuh’s advice wasn’t outdated —not that he knew <b>why</b> Ramuh had told him to give Stella a necklace and bead like she had given him, Ramuh had refused to explain that part—, <em>“Stella of Clan Ulric of the Village of Skye,”</em> he pronounced with care,<em> “it would be my honor if you would accept this gift.”</em> She kept staring and he swallowed a bit before awkwardly explaining, <em>“The necklace are the teeth of an albino Behemoth that I killed, and the bead is of stone broken and crafted in the shines of the-,”</em> He didn’t know how to say Ramuh’s name or title,<em> “the shrines amid the jungle.”</em></p>
<p>Stella looked up from the gift, too shocked to be angry, <em>“Why would … why do you give me this?”</em> Deleantur blinked, unsure how to tell her that Ramuh himself told him to.</p>
<p>Then he glanced down at his feet and said instead, <em>“You have been nothing but kind to me, and you gave me a beautiful gift. I … wanted to give one in return.”</em> He glanced at her frozen expression and added softly, <em>“You don’t have to accept. I will understand. I know you hate me.”</em> He didn’t understand why she and everyone watching flinched at the last sentence, but braced for more yelling and spite. Instead, Stella reached out with hesitant fingers and accepted both the bead and necklace. She strung the necklace around her neck with slightly shaking hands, rolled the bead over in her fingers and paused at the small flower designs he had etched onto the surface. She looked like she wanted to ask. Instead, she slipped the bead onto the end of one of the braids in her hair. Deleantur wondered if it was arrogant to think that the bead he’d made looked pretty in her hair.</p>
<p>She raised her head and stared at him with an expression he couldn’t decipher, <em>“…Thank you. I accept your gift.”</em> She paused, looked him over, <em>“You … felled an albino Behemoth?”</em></p>
<p>Oh, she probably wanted proof that it was albino, and that he hadn’t wasted any part of it. Deleantur held up a hand in a signal to wait and carefully began pulling the pieces from his armiger. A crowd of gasping Galahdians gathered as he pulled free the hollowed out claws and fangs, the massive horns, the meat —frozen with ice magic and preserved in his armiger like a freezer so it was still mostly fresh—, and finally the massive hide he had tanned using Ramuh’s guidance and a lot of magical cheating. Stella covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wide, and around Deleantur the entire village buzzed.</p>
<p>Deleantur glanced cautiously at the Chieftain, bowed respectfully at the waist as the man stepped closer, then impulsively held out the massive twin fangs to the man as a gift, <em>“For your kindness and hospitality,” </em>he said firmly, hoping to keep them from thinking he was putting them in a debt or something —he’d already dealt with that drama thank you—. <em>“I also bring word of your enemies, the Bellum. I found their camp and learned some of their plans as well as their </em>motive-<em> um, their reasons.”</em></p>
<p>Chief Candor eyed him with an unreadable expression, then nodded curtly, took the Behemoth fangs, and gestured toward the big lodge, <em>“Come, and speak to us of what you have seen and done in your absence.”</em> And there was something … not respectful, but not as frosty and hostile in his voice anymore.</p>
<p>Deleantur would take what he could get, <em>“As you say.”</em></p>
<p>He ended up talking for hours while the village fussed over the Behemoth parts and parceled it out with much muttering. He stumbled over his words, over the phrases he didn’t quite know how to translate as he told them of the Bellum Chief who had overthrown the others, who had united the Bellum Clan and then scattered it into different parts to conquer and take all he could. Chief Candor sent messengers running for the nearby villages the moment Deleantur explained their plan to attack them, and glances were exchanged when he tried to skirt around why the Bellum had decided against attacking Skye again for now. Stella sat at his side with a rigid spine, his gift in her hair and around her neck, and Deleantur prayed inwardly the entire time she wouldn’t stab him. But her hostility seemed … partly sated, at least for now.</p>
<p>Deleantur was exhausted by the time the Elders and Chief Candor let him leave. Words were far more exhausting than they’d ever been as Noctis, especially when he had to struggle to mentally translate them without any help —no one here knew King’s Speech, he was on his own if he got stuck on a word or phrase—. It didn’t help that he had probably been awake for three or more days straight following Ramuh around, because Ramuh didn’t need sleep and Deleantur’s sense of time was too messed up to alert him that he needed to stop and rest. He staggered back to his temporary house and idly patted Dawon’s head as she greeted him —so this was where she had wandered off to while Ramuh led him around the jungle—. He stripped off his shirt and shoes collapsed in the bed without thinking, barely awake enough to slide under the covers rather than just sleep on top of them. He was dozing off in an instant.</p>
<p>He startled awake from his doze when a slender figure slid under the covers with him, dressed only in a very thin slip of some kind of silky material he would have thought tribal folk wouldn’t have. Deleantur growled half-heartedly in exhausted annoyance —because he’d forgotten that Stella kept claiming the bed— and starting to crawl out of the alcove, even though it meant carefully crawling over a startled Stella —he took care not to bump or touch her as he moved, he was not in the mood to die tonight—.</p>
<p>A slender but very, very strong hand grabbed his wrist before he could escape, <em>“Where are you going?”</em> She demanded and it took Deleantur several seconds of bleak staring at the wall to mentally translate it.</p>
<p>“Out. I don’t want to die tonight,” he grumped, paused and hung his head in exhaustion when he realized he’d said that in the wrong language. He gave up words and tried to resume evacuating the bed, but found Stella’s grip on his wrist to be unyielding as steel. He looked down at her miserably, tried very hard not to think about their position and how badly someone would react if they came into the house for whatever reason. Stella looked into his eyes, bared her teeth like a wild thing and then <b>tugged</b>. Deleantur toppled back onto the bed with a yip, rolling to narrowly avoid landing on Stella. This, unfortunately, put him in the back of the alcove, far away from any escape. He pressed himself against the wall as Stella rolled over to face him, boxing him in.</p>
<p><em>“Sleep.”</em> She said curtly, <em>“You are exhausted.”</em></p>
<p>Deleantur fought the tug of unconsciousness as he mumbled disjointedly, <em>“You- why let me stay?”</em></p>
<p>She frowned at him, <em>“It is your house and your bed. Why do you sleep on the floor all the time?”</em></p>
<p>His brain was feeling fuzzy, even the usual clamor of his Crystal memories going quiet beneath his fatigue, <em>“You sleep here.”</em></p>
<p><em>“I am truly too horrible to touch?”</em> Why did she sound insulted over him respecting her modesty and privacy? She sounded genuinely insulted. Had he mistranslated?</p>
<p>“I’m too freaking tired for this,” he muttered. Then he scrubbed a hand for his face and mustered enough energy to say, <em>“You hate me. You want me to stay away. So I do.”</em></p>
<p>She stared at him like he was the strangest thing she had ever seen. Deleantur decided that he no longer had the energy to care, even if it meant getting stabbed —Dawon would protect him from that anyway, theoretically—, and rolled over so he was facing the wall. If she wanted to stab him after pulling him back into bed, then it wouldn’t matter if she stabbed his back or his front. He’d deal with it in the morning. Assuming he lived that long.</p>
<p>He was out cold before he could hear Stella say anything more.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Anyone who follows my Tumblr is probably screaming right now. :3 But I couldn't resist the Ultimate Culture Shenanigans.</p>
<p>Also Ramuh is 100% meddling and he knows it. He is certain this will be the Perfect Plan. No possible repercussions or backfiring with this no sir.</p>
<p>Shiva, the only Astral with a shred of sense in the relationship department: Ummm, Ramuh-</p>
<p>Ramuh: Hush. I know what I'm doing.</p>
<p>Shiva: You really, truly do not. But okay.</p>
<p>Also also Deleantur is going to remain oblivious to this for ... a while. Never underestimate the power of Cultural Misunderstandings coupled with Denial. :333</p>
<p>For anyone who doesn't know what's going on, either go read my Galahd Culture tag on my tumblr (link is in my profile) or just buckle up for the ride along with Del.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>In which some misunderstandings are cleared, more of them crop up, Deleantur needs a hug, and Stella wants someone to slap her.</p>
<p>At least no one is quite so mad at Deleantur anymore. :3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Stella didn’t understand Deleantur. She had thought he was a manipulator. A greedy soul that didn’t deserve the Ulric braid of mourning in his hair —let alone the old Ulric Chieftain braid next to it—. Who drove her to give herself to him to pay off the village debt because his greed would be sated by nothing else. She had <b>hated</b> him and had clung to that hate after he accepted her bead. Had clung to that hatred so that she wouldn’t break when he claimed her to make their marriage full in body as well as promise.</p>
<p>But he had never tried. He slept on the floor with his Coeurl despite the annoyed looks and grumbles she could hear from him about it in the mainlander tongue. He had given her as much space as physically possible in this house they now shared, had taken on household chores without even thinking of foisting them off her. She had hated and waited for the other shoe to drop, but when it <b>had</b>, it hadn’t been any of the things she expected —him finally bedding her, him trying to make her obey his whims even though she would so clearly fight back, him sending his Coeurl after her even—.</p>
<p>Deleantur had disappeared. He had up and vanished one early morning into the jungle, disappearing for two weeks without a word or a sign that he was alive, that he had not run off and left to find a wife that wouldn’t hate him and stand ready to oppose him if he crossed lines he should not cross. The only sign that he might still return had been his Coeurl, who drifted back into the village a week after he disappeared and settled in the house with the patience of an exasperated mother awaiting her cub. Stella had been afraid to enter the house with the Coeurl, but she —Dawon, Deleantur called her Dawon— had made no move to attack, had ignored Stella as if she didn’t exist and instead watched the doorway for Deleantur’s return. But still Deleantur had not come, day after day.</p>
<p>She had been arguing with her father and Isidora over what to do about his disappearance when Deleantur had finally returned, disheveled and with dark bags under his eyes like he had not slept in all that time he had been gone. He had marched straight to her, ignoring the angry questions aimed his way, and held out a beautifully crafted bead of swirling colors —Protection dappled with Loyalty and Freedom and Love— and a necklace of Behemoth teeth. <b>Albino</b> Behemoth teeth. He had proposed to her with an offering even greater than hers, had looked her in the eye and insisted it was a <b>gift</b>, a thank you for the beautiful gift she had given him to clear the village’s debt, and that it would be his honor if she accepted his in return.</p>
<p>She had accepted, both because to do otherwise would bring trouble down on her village if Deleantur’s temper turned dark, and also because … she didn’t understand him. She had only offered a bead and necklace out of desperation to clear the debt of the village, she had made it clear that she hated him in everything short of word and drawing the knife, and yet … he was thanking her. Calling her kind. She hadn’t been able to decide if he was a master manipulator or truly earnest —and if he was earnest in this, then had she … somehow misunderstood everything he had done before now?—.</p>
<p>Stella had asked about the albino Behemoth, because to fell a Behemoth —<b>by himself</b>— was already a great feat, but the rarity and deadliness of the albino ones… He seemed to take her words as a demand for proof and had then pulled from the thin air of his magic entire piles of fresh —fresh!— Behemoth meat, cold as if they’d been just washed in the waters of a winter spring. He had pulled free claws, already hollowed and prepared, great horns longer than she was tall, and twin fangs as long as her arms. He had given the fangs to her father without hesitation, and then revealed that he had not only felled an albino Behemoth, he had scouted the camp of the Bellum and uncovered information on their motives and plans.</p>
<p>It was … it was inconceivable. For the man they had all thought was broken and greedy, who wore untempered Black like a badge. Who wore braids of mourning and chieftainship and loneliness and held Chieftain Kukri, yet named no village and claimed no surviving family. Who was only allowed to live in their village because he did not bear the mark of an exile and had saved their past and future…</p>
<p>He had done all this. For them? He had done all this and in the end watched not with satisfaction or anger, but with a bone-deep weariness, an exhaustion that spoke as loud as the leaves of the jungle in a storm that he expected nothing to come of this. He expected the anger to remain, the hate to linger. He was doing this without any hope of reward, two weeks of effort and staggeringly valuable gifts and he … genuinely seemed to expect nothing.</p>
<p>Looking back on it, Stella was beginning to wonder if he had genuinely not wanted anything to do with the debt he’d incurred. Because the look in his eyes as he followed her father into the Great Hall to tell the Chieftains, Elders, and Hunt Masters all he had learned was the same one he had worn when they had offered him land and wealth and a place among them. Exhausted, resigned confusion.</p>
<p>Then he had staggered ahead of her to the house, already collapsed under the covers in the dark by the time she followed after him. She had hidden her grimace and followed him in, safe at least in the knowledge that he looked far too exhausted to try consummating their marriage tonight-.</p>
<p>He had groaned and tried to crawl out of the bed the moment she entered, as if determined to sleep on the floor again even though she could feel his resentment over it.</p>
<p>And Stella did not understand. She didn’t understand it now anymore than she had when she asked him and he had given disjointed, slurred answers that made no sense to her.</p>
<p>
  
  <em>“You hate me. You want me to stay away. So I do.”</em>
</p>
<p>Such a simple reason. Such a simple, stupid reason. Why would he care that she hated him? She was his wife, and while Galahdians treasured their freedoms before and after marriage, it was still his right —one of his only “rights” in their relationship— for him to consummate their marriage just the once. Beyond that, it was definitely his right to sleep in his own bed, whether or not she despised him. But he refused. He didn’t touch her, he gave her the bed and all the space he could…</p>
<p>All out of respect for her wishes?</p>
<p>Stella wrestled with the illogicality of it, the clash between the image she’d built of him in her mind and the sudden evidence to the contrary for most of the night, unable to sleep because of her thoughts. Next to her, curled against the wall, her husband slept the deep sleep of the exhausted, not so much as twitching when she rolled over to stare at his back in the darkness.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand you,” she whispered at the back of his head. He didn’t react to her voice in the slightest, too dead to the world after two weeks of trekking through the jungle, fighting mighty beasts and carving a marriage bead he did not need to make but had anyway.</p>
<p>She woke up from her fitful dozing as the sun began to rise and stir the morning jungle mists. Scrubbing fatigue from her face, she got up and prepared for the day. She held off on making food, as it was likely Deleantur wouldn’t stir for hours yet. Dawon raised her silky black head for a moment as Stella walked by, then lowered it again in disinterest, Stella took it as approval of her plan. She claimed an early morning snack in the form of some of the stored fruit in the ice box, turned around and leaned against the wall to stare at the unmoving form of her husband. He was still curled up with his back to her, blankets half tossed off from when Stella had gotten up, exposing his bare back to the cool morning air.</p>
<p>She took another bite of the fruit in her hand and puzzled over him. Wondering if she should be bold enough to ask questions of his past, maybe figure out if his life on the mainland was at fault for how many mixed signals he was sending —Mainlanders were strange after all, everyone knew that—. She debated how to go about asking said questions as the sun rose and filtered through the window she had opened, golden fingers of light reaching out to touch the bed.</p>
<p>And Deleantur’s exposed back.</p>
<p>Her fruit dropped from nerveless fingers, the thud startling Dawon, but Stella didn’t even notice the low chuff of surprise and irritation from the Coeurl.</p>
<p>She was too busy staring at … at…</p>
<p>The scars.</p>
<p><b>Astrals</b>, there were <b>so many scars</b>.</p>
<p>They curled across his back, stark against his pale skin. Some where recognizable, the imprints of fangs and claws of beasts, the scratches of hard falls, but most … most were from blades. Blades that had cut open his back and scored his sides and arms, large and small, close calls and wounds only just deep enough to scar. In between them, fewer but strange and eye-catching, were the round scars, like someone had taken the head off of their arrows and instead sharpened the tips to points and buried them in his skin.</p>
<p>But worse than those, more eye-catching and terrible than any of those…</p>
<p>She didn’t realize she had crossed the distance to the bed until she rested shaking fingers on the scar and felt the muted snap of something inhuman nip at her fingers from the raised tissue. A little sting, like the static that heralded a bad storm. The blade scar as long as her hand rested right behind his heart, and in the light of dawn, Stella was sure she wasn’t imagining that it had a faint blue glow to it, like the starflowers in the shrines beneath the full moon.</p>
<p>How had he survived this? Had the blade not gone deep enough to kill him? Was the glow a sign of his magic, keeping him alive despite a fatal strike? “Who tried so hard to kill you?” She whispered. Then, with a jolt, her eyes flickered up to his braids.</p>
<p>A braid of mourning, the braid of a Chief … the braid of the Last, one who’s entire clan had been destroyed. She hadn’t thought much of it, hadn’t participated in the gossip of the village over what had happened to his old home, whether they had been killed by some mistake or machination of his. But now, looking at the scars and the braids, thinking on his all black clothing… the meaning was altogether different. <em>I am Undaunted, I mourn for I am the Chief of None. I have nothing left to fear.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>Because even death is denied me.</em>
</p>
<p>She pulled her hand away with a flinch when he half-stirred. When he rolled over to face her in his sleep, she felt her gut clench. He had even more scars on his front, more small circles, more bites and claws —though none of those as serious as the large claw marks on the small of his back—, more blades, and a matching blue scar over his heart where he had been … <b>run through</b>. Stella pulled away and sat on the edge of the bed with spinning thoughts until a low noise dragged her attention to the Coeurl. Dawon watched her with inhumanly intelligent eyes, as if judging her for her reaction, waiting to see how Stella would respond to this accidental knowledge.</p>
<p>“He is not a manipulator at all, is he?” Stella murmured and somehow was unsurprised when the Coeurl answered with a shake of her head. Stella took a deep breath, “What happened to him?” A flat look, a twitch of the ears and a tilt of the whiskers toward the sleeping man in question, <em>ask him yourself</em>. Stella accepted the admonishment, bit her lip and then asked one last question, “Does he have anyone of his clan left? Anyone at all?”</p>
<p>Dawon stared at her for a long time, then lowered her head to her paws without answering. Somehow, that was an answer in and of itself.</p>
<p>With one last look at the confusing, scarred, impossibly alive man, Stella stood up and picked her fruit off the floor. She had a lot to think about before Deleantur woke up.</p>
<p>By the time Deleantur stirred from his rest, Stella had done her best to compose herself and was making breakfast using some of the Behemoth meat he had brought back the previous day. She heard him wake up, a low noise in the back of his throat that was half a growl of protest and half something that might have been pain as he stretched —his scars had to pull on him, she knew hers did, they ached when the weather shifted as well, and surely with that many scars, rainy days or early mornings were a misery for him—. She tried to keep her back to him as he slid out of the covers, but morbid curiosity had her turning around to watch him carefully stretching and rolling his shoulders before even trying to stand. He was blearily searching for his tunic when she blurted, “What happened to you?”</p>
<p>He flinched at the sound of her voice, looked at her blankly for several seconds without any comprehension. His eyes were distant, like he was seeing through her and not at her. Then he rubbed a hand over his face, shook his head, and seemed to focus, “…What?”</p>
<p>Stella hesitated uneasily, then cautiously gestured to his torso, “What happened to you?”</p>
<p>He looked down at himself, froze, then hissed something in the mainlander tongue as he looked around frantically for a tunic. He finally spotted the one he had abandoned on the floor the previous night and snatched it up, struggling to pull it on again with shaking limbs. Stella watched him hide beneath his long sleeves of black again and dared to say, “I’ve never heard of someone surviving wounds like that.” He stilled at her voice, staring blankly at the window, tunic rumpled from his hasty movements. “Is,” Stella hesitated, glanced down at Dawon for a sign she was pushing too far, but the Coeurl made no move to stop her, “is it from your magic?”</p>
<p>“Something like that,” he replied, bitter and quiet and pained. He stood up and made as if to leave entirely, paused when he saw the food she was cooking. Something flashed in his eyes, something akin to helpless frustration, or even confusion, and he settled down again. Stella turned back to her task, but she could feel him watching her the entire time.</p>
<p>The food was eaten in an uncomfortable silence, and it wasn’t until Deleantur was clearing the dishes away she dared to ask another question, “What happened to your clan?”</p>
<p>The hands clearing away the dishes stilled and his head was bent so that she couldn’t get a good look at his face as he replied stiffly, “Does it matter?”</p>
<p>“It’s effected you this deeply, so yes. I think it does.” Stella winced at her own sharp tone and then softened it, “I just … want to understand. You confuse me. Confuse all of us,” he huffed something darkly amused in the mainlander tongue under his breath and while she couldn’t understand it, she was willing to bet it was something to the order of “oh really”. She took a breath to settle her temper, “I want to understand you. But I can’t without asking questions.”</p>
<p>He raised his head to look at her, eyes eerie and too-old once more and for a moment she was certain he was going to deny her. That he was going to demand to know why he had to give her anything when all she had done so far was hate him. Then the fighting edge bled from his gaze and left him looking … tired. Tired and far too old for his skin. He looked away, “They died. Some died to protect me, the rest died fighting alongside me. Because I was too weak to protect them.”</p>
<p>The bitterness in his voice thickened his accent considerably, but his words were still understandable. The pain in them even more so. He snatched up the dishes and limped his way out the door, Stella following like a moth caught in the wake of a flame as he kept talking, a garbled mix of mainlander and Galahdian that only let her hear snatches of the story but all of the pain, “They died and there was nothing I could do about it <em>but die with them, because that’s what a king does. That’s </em>what my father did <em>after they stabbed him in the back but I </em>loved them because they were <b>mine</b> and I couldn’t <b>help it</b> and now they’re gone and I don’t know how to <b>mourn them</b>!”</p>
<p>The last statement seemed to snap his composure, and the flare of magic tasted like ozone on her tongue and felt like pressure in the roots of her teeth as he suddenly <b>flung</b> one of the plates across the washing stream and into the nearest tree with a hard thunk that made her glad they were sturdy stone and not the delicate pottery some of the other Clans prized. Deleantur stood there for a long moment, his back to her, his shoulders shaking, and Stella tried to set her world back on its axis in light of the new picture building in her head.</p>
<p>Scars and grief and magic. Born on the Mainland. She’d assumed his parents had taught him of their home culture and that he’d just chosen to ignore it, but …</p>
<p>“You don’t know how to mourn?”</p>
<p>A frustrated gesture with the remaining plate in his hand, like he wanted to throw but refused to, “I know how to <b>mourn</b>. I just … don’t know how to mourn <b>them</b>. It’s different, here on the islands, and I don’t know how … to pay respects.”</p>
<p>“But you’re wearing a mourning braid. You’re wearing a chieftain braid and…” her voice trailed off at the way his shoulders hunched, at how he sat down on the stream’s bank with a defeated noise.</p>
<p>“Nyx Ulric,” he said and for a long moment the name hung in the air without explanation. Long enough that she dared come closer and sit down on the riverbank a safe distance away, but close enough to listen. Deleantur stared into the jungle with a blank gaze, a remembering gaze. He took a shaky breath and ran a hand over his original braids, the ones he had been wearing since the village had first met him, “He wore … braids like these. Before he died. I know … roughly what these ones mean. Chief. Mourning. Last of my clan. But … I don’t <b>know</b>, you know? I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”</p>
<p>Stella chewed on that information for a while, saw the weary, depressed slump of the man’s shoulders and wondered how she could have ever thought him a calm, mask-wearing manipulator. For all the sensation of his magic in the air was terrifying, it was also … enlightening. It whispered emotions across her skin and in her ears, whispered of pain and grief and confusion and frustration, as real as her own emotions, far more real than any lie. Finally, she asked, “Your father did not teach you?”</p>
<p>A scoff, “Dad wasn’t Galahdian. And mom died when I was very young. Dad … took in the Galahdians. The ones that he found anyway. Tried to help them and care for them, even if they weren’t … even if he wasn’t their Chief. I didn’t … I didn’t see them that often. Or know them very well. Not before the end.” Deleantur dropped the plate and pressed his hands to his face, “It isn’t considered proper for a <em>king</em> to mingle with his <em>subjects</em>, not like a Chief mingles with his clan. I knew them, I knew of them, but it wasn’t until after my father died and everything … everything fell apart that I <b>knew</b> them. That I … understood what it meant. For them to be by my side. I was their <b>Chief</b> and I … I had no idea what to do with that. I barely knew what it meant at all. All I knew was that I had to … try.”</p>
<p>He laughed suddenly, a broken, raw noise that was ugly as a bloody wound, “Not that it mattered. I tried to die for them, die <b>with them</b>…” he lowered his hands and stared at the running water of the stream like it held the answers to all his regrets, “and now I’m the only one left.”</p>
<p>Stella stared at him and felt pieces of a puzzle she’d not realized she was holding fall into place. Saw the weariness and guilt and pain where once she had thought it was anger and arrogance and felt … blind. Guilty. Horrified. A Galahdian Chief raised by a Mainlander father, not allowed to speak or learn very often from the clan that stayed, no doubt out of loyalty to the dead mother and the ignorant son. A son who had tried to step into a role for which he had not been taught.</p>
<p>And then lost everything, just as he learned what it meant to have it in the first place.</p>
<p>She swallowed hard, “You don’t have … any family left?”</p>
<p>“I have … Som and Dyn. But they’re … half-brothers. They don’t … they don’t know anything about Galahd, and while I love them and I know they care for me … they have their own lives, their own families, their own <em>kingdoms</em> to run. They welcome me but … I don’t think I really fit. So I … came here. I guess I hoped I would find some answers but…” Then Deleantur laughed again, coarse and broken and bitter, “Why am I telling you all this. You don’t care.”</p>
<p>Stella’s anger made her jolt to her feet, “Of course I care! Why would you say…” her voice trailed off as his eyebrow climbed and they both recalled her behavior toward him before that morning. Stella took a deep breath that hurt her heart while Deleantur flicked a wrist and somehow called the wayward plate back to his hand in a flicker of blue sparks and started roughly washing everything. Stella watched him work and sorted her thoughts. Eventually gave up trying to sort them and sat down with a miserable sigh, <em>Ancestors and Storm-Father forgive me, I have wronged one of my kin. I have wronged my </em><b><em>husband</em></b><em> and I do not know how to make it right.</em></p>
<p>As Deleantur began to stand, his task finished, Stella dared to catch his tunic with her fingers, a silent request for him to stay. He paused, settled into a crouch that could only be called cautious and Stella suppressed a wince as her seething temper, turned so long on Deleantur, now turned on herself, “I … am sorry. I did not know you were raised solely by Mainlanders.” She started slowly, “You are … conflicting. In the message you send. Your braids name you as one of us, but your Colors and so many of the things you say … do not. It didn’t occur to me that you did not <b>know</b> how to behave, that you were not simply flaunting our customs because you didn’t care.” She bit her lip, “Do you know any of the Stories?”</p>
<p>Deleantur was eyeing her like one would a wayward Coeurl cub, unsure if it was going to bite or call down its Pride on him, “I know a few of them. The- he- I don’t know his title in this tongue. The Old Man. He told them to me. The Tale of the Beginning, the Song of the Sacred Laws, the Birth of the Great Clans. Um … I know <b>some</b> braid meanings, but not all of them.”</p>
<p>Internally, Stella winced, “That is all?”</p>
<p>Deleantur shrugged, “Pretty much.”</p>
<p>Ancestors and Astrals forgive her, she had been judging him for the arrogance of a man when he had been stumbling through interaction with all the ignorance of a <b>child</b>. “You were not taught the Song of Colors? The Tales of Twilight? The Wars of the Beasts and Seas?” Deleantur looked away. His clenched jaw was answer enough. Stella nodded to herself, “Alright. …Alright. Then I will teach you.” He blinked at her and she stuck out her chin, “I was wrong about you,” she admitted bluntly, “and my behavior has wronged you. So I will make it right. I will teach you our ways, and how to properly mourn.”</p>
<p>For a long moment, she thought he was going to refuse her. She had done nothing to earn his regard or trust after all, but after what felt like an eternity of staring, Deleantur nodded, slow and cautious, “…Okay. I would … I would appreciate that.” He tilted his head, then asked almost timidly, “Can you tell me why everyone makes such a fuss over my wearing black?”</p>
<p>Stella rubbed her arm, biting back the instinctual response of “it’s obvious”. Because it was no more obvious to Deleantur that it would be to a child of the Clan who had yet to learn the Song of Colors, “Colors have meaning, and the colors you choose to wear proclaim your intent, your beliefs, and your mind. Black is the color of Undaunted.” His gaze turned confused and she continued, “It is not a <b>bad</b> color, not like Pink or White, but to be Undaunted is to be fearless. When not tempered by another color it is to be … too fearless. Reckless. Uncaring of who might get hurt, or even of your own wellbeing. When paired with your mourning braid…” She hesitated, “It speaks of a man who no longer cares what happens to his life, or the lives of those around him.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” Deleantur said quietly. His frown deepened, “But … the others-. Nyx Ulric and the others, they wore a lot of black too.”</p>
<p>“Were there not other colors tempering the black?”</p>
<p>His gaze turned distant as he looked into memory, “…Yes. Purple, mostly. And silver.”</p>
<p>Stella twitched at the mention of Silver, but refused to give any more reaction than that. For a clan living under a Mainlander’s rule, fighting in Mainlander wars for the sake of a dead woman and a young Chieftain who didn’t even know what he was … she could think of a lot worse colors to wear than Silver that would still be appropriate, “Purple,” she said instead of addressing the other color, “is the color of Loyalty. Loyalty to clan, to family, to your own ideals. The Ulrics wear Black tempered with Purple as a sign of our Clan.”</p>
<p>Deleantur shifted so he was sitting on the ground again, a spark flickering to life in his gaze, “So all the Clans have colors they … swear by?”</p>
<p>“Yes. Ulrics wear Black and Purple, while the Ostium, our sister Clan, wear Blue tempered with Black and often Green as well.” She saw the question forming on his lips and said, “Blue is the color of Protection and Green is the color of Watchfulness.” She smiled despite herself, “Ostium have a long-standing belief that without them, their Ulric neighbors would get themselves killed from recklessness.” Atreus certainly thought so, though he and Stella hadn’t been on speaking terms since she went and offered herself to Deleantur without warning him first.</p>
<p>“Oh,” murmured Deleantur, clearly more to himself than her, “like Lib.” He didn’t elaborate, and Stella decided not to push her luck with asking. They spent the morning seated by the creek, going over the meanings of colors and what combinations were associated with which Clan. Deleantur looked surprised to realize that there were two Clans living in the village and not one, complete with two Chiefs —he told her that he had assumed her father was the Chief, he hadn’t even realized the woman always at his side was <b>another</b> Chief, and Stella tried not to be shaken by the realization of just how thoroughly she and the village had mistaken shy ignorance for cold apathy and disrespect—. From there it moved to the actual Song of Colors, and Deleantur looked oddly amused to be taught a children’s song, but went along with it easily —he had a nice voice, soft and a bit raspy from lack of use, but nice—. Eventually they parted ways, Deleantur returning to the house to sleep some more —at her suggestion, which he seemed wary to accept, but then his Coeurl came and gleefully dragged him off by his tunic toward the house—.</p>
<p>With Deleantur taken care of for the moment, Stella went to go find Atreus and begin righting some of her wrongs.</p>
<p>She found Atreus exactly where she thought she would, weeding his garden of healing herbs, his long braids tucked into his ponytail to keep them out of the way as he bent to his task. She paused on the edge of the patch, aware from the way his bare shoulders stiffened that he already knew she was there, “Atreus,” she murmured softly, “I … I need to talk to you.”</p>
<p>Her childhood friend inhaled slowly, exhaled and stood in one smooth movement. His gaze flickered over her, looking for injuries, settled on her pale face and his jaw tightened. He jerked his head and they slipped away into the outskirts of the village, where the jungle thickened and started to turn wild again and no one could casually eavesdrop on them. Stella took a deep breath, “I know you are still angry with me, for not warning you of my intent. I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Atreus leaned against the nearest tree and crossed his arms, green eyes hard, but she knew it was from worry, “What do you need?”</p>
<p>Stella ran a hand through her hair, “Someone to talk to that I can trust. I…” She didn’t know where to start, how to tell him everything that had crashed into place, “He slept with me last night.” She winced the moment the words left her, because that was <b>not</b> what she should have led with. Not what she had <b>meant</b> to lead with.</p>
<p>Atreus’s jaw went tight enough to make his muscles twinge, and he breathed slowly through his nose with his shaking hands clenched on his crossed arms, “Do you … need medicine,” he managed in a strangled tone, “for your aches?”</p>
<p>Stella made a face, “Not <b>that</b> kind of sleep, Atreus. I mean <b>actual</b> sleep. I don’t think he rested the entire time he was missing. By the time we got back to the house he was barely able to stand.” She rubbed her arms and confessed, “He hasn’t slept with me before, in <b>either</b> sense. He usually sleeps on the floor with his Coeurl.” Atreus’s simmering rage faltered, and he frowned at her in silent question. Stella smiled thinly, “He said it was because I hated him, so he stayed away.” Her smile faded as she remembered the revelations of the morning, “He … Storm-Father as my witness, Atreus, he has <b>so many scars</b>. I don’t-.”</p>
<p>She closed her eyes and behind her eyelids she could see the unnatural blue scar of the blade that had run him through, “His magic is the only reason he still breathes. He isn’t the last of his clan because he was a coward and ran away. He’s the last because they <b>all</b> fell, and he was the only one unlucky enough to wake up again and walk away from it.” She opened her eyes, “I spoke to him. Of his past. Of his old clan. I hadn’t bothered to before and…” her voice cracked without her consent, and Atreus straightened up in alarm. Her vision blurred and Atreus was suddenly right there, holding her tight and steady, like he always had as children, the elder brother she did not have by blood, “<b>Astrals</b>, Atreus, we have been treating him like a pariah for flaunting our customs when he doesn’t even <b>know</b> most of them. His father was a Mainlander and his mother died when he was small. He wasn’t even allowed to <b>see</b> his clan with any regularity until he was old enough to inherit the mantle of Chief, and by then it was too late. His enemies came and took his entire clan from him.”</p>
<p>Atreus’s grip tightened, “He told you all that?”</p>
<p>“Only when I asked, when I pushed for answers. He-. He barely even knew how to put in his own braids, Atreus. He knows only the barest of the Songs and Stories, and he’s never heard the Song of Colors before today.” Her vision blurred too much, and a blink let tears slide free, “I have wronged him. Storm-Father above I have <b>wronged</b> my husband and treated him like a criminal for things he didn’t even <b>understand</b>-!”</p>
<p>“Shhh, Stella, shhh,” Atreus rested his chin on her head, “we’ll figure this out. We’ll … Astrals, you’re sure? Of all of this? He’s not pretending?”</p>
<p>“No.” Stella whispered into her friend’s shoulder, “He has never pretended. We were the ones who misunderstood everything he did. He’s <b>hurt</b>, Atreus, he had no knowledge of what colors meant and yet the Black … it suits him too well. He is Undaunted because he has nothing <b>left</b> to fear.” <em>Not even death.</em></p>
<p>Atreus guided them down to sit on the jungle floor, humming soothingly the entire time, “Then … we’ll make this right. We’ll teach him.” He looked at her and for the first time since she had given her bead to Deleantur, there was no anger in his eyes, “We’ll tell the clans too. Discreetly. After the gifts he brought us yesterday, I don’t think anyone will question your words.”</p>
<p>Stella leaned into her bond-brother’s hug in relief, “You’ll help? You’ll come? You were- you’ve always been better with teaching. With the stories and explaining the laws of the Clans.”</p>
<p>“Of course I will.” Atreus paused, then added halfheartedly, “So long as you keep his Coeurl from eating me.”</p>
<p>“Deal.”</p>
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